[kradroy]

Compelling, but the Sans Forgetica font's effect is focused on recall/remembering. From the two abstracts you linked (I'm not paying for the papers) it appears the experiments were testing the effect of disfluent fonts on reasoning. These are different cognitive activities, so it doesn't really disconfirm the font's creators' claims.

[michaelkeenan]

I just checked the review with Sci-Hub, and you are correct. I was much too hasty. The memory effect is still plausible, they write:

> "Although the more general prevalence of “desirable difficulties” (Bjork, 1994) is beyond the scope of this article, several research groups have found that disfluent fonts improve performance on memory tasks (Cotton et al, 2014, Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011; French et al., 2013; Lee, 2013; Sungkhasettee, Friedman, & Castel, 2011; Weltman & Eakin, 2014). Though some have also failed to replicate these effects (Eitel, Kühl, Scheiter, & Gerjets, 2014; Yue, Castel, & Bjork, 2013), the balance of evidence suggests that disfluent fonts may aid memory but not reasoning—presumably because reading words more slowly benefits memory, but not reasoning." (my emphasis)

[kradroy]

What I'm puzzled by is their need for creating a new font and marketing it. All prior studies finding this improved recall effect used already available fonts in the experiments. I can't find any license for Sans Forgetica, so I assume it is free to use. Maybe exposure/fame for the lab?

[lostatseajoshua]

I reached out to them directly (RMIT) about the license and they responded that is not available for commercial use.

“Sans Forgetica is designed for non-commercial use only. It is bound by a creative commons, non-commercial, attributed (CCBYNC) license.”